A thing with cobwebs in it's eyes in M R James' The Tractate MiddothAlso James - the leathery thing in The Treasure of Abbot ThomasThe ghastly death of the German night fighter pilot in Robert Westall's 'haunted bomber' story Blackham's WimpyThe evil car in Keith Roberts' The Scarlet LadyThe thing (log, body or figment of the imagination) in John Gordon's The House on the Brink. There is a scene where it is in a cornfield in a thunderstorm and is closer with every flash of lightning......... Fritz Lieber's Smoke Ghost

And plenty more........

"If there is any kind of supreme being it is up to all of us to become its moral superior."

Tonyblack wrote:I read Animal Farm when I was a kid and had no idea of it's Soviet parody.

That must have been a bit traumatizing! I was about 12 or 13 when I read it, and felt very pleased with myself for picking up on the symbolism and whatnot. Course now it seems incredibly heavy-handed, and the time I get to the pigs and the humans sitting around looking like each other I'm going "Jeez, Orwell, I get it already!".

There's also H.P. Lovecraft's works. Individually, the stories aren't that scary but the concept of mankind's insignificance and helplessness when faced with an uncaring, godless universe can be quite thought provoking. (I once heard Lovecraft's stories described as "supernatural horror for atheists", which probably sums them up quite well)

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

The Straw Men, but really any horror book, especially things with serial killers. I just try and avoid reading them - I'm pretty nightmare prone at the best of times. Poirot used to give me awful nightmares as a kid, especially if I didn't see the end of the episode and I stayed up all night reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets when it came out because I was too scared to sleep.

There's a series of books called 'the banned and the banished' by James Clemens, I read the first one and was too scared to start on the second one, they are so gruesome - almost made me sick, but other than that they are quite good.

James Herbert - The Ghosts of Sleath - Where the carpenter type dude 'planes' the face off the child abuser.......

Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian - When The Comanches ride up wearing the bloody wedding dresses of the victims they have just slaughtered...and the ending in the barn leaves a funny old taste in the mouth......

Bram Stoker - Dracula - Yep, creeped the bejeesus out of me especially when the Ship rolls into Whitby with no crew and most of the scenes in the Asylum!

Z for Zachariah - Robert C O Brien - most of it disturbed me, was probably too young when we read it in English Lit......

Oh, and in Clive Barkers Books of Blood there was a tale about two villages who create these massive human figures (out of er, each other) and fight to the death. When one village/man collapses, the imagery is pretty grim and squishy.....